Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Re: LAMS 2.0 and Moodle Integration Beta Release

By: Fiona Malikoff

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Anders,

Firstly, about the number of sequences that you are creating. Exactly what are you doing? I assume you are clicking on Create Sequence, and that brings up the authoring client. At that point do you:
(1) import a sequence (using File, Import), or
(2) going into authoring, opening an existing sequence (doing File, Open), change the sequence and then save it.

The sequences in the "Mina groupper" section should have been created by something you did in authoring (ie after clicking Create Sequence).

The sequences in the "Lesson Sequence Folder" are created when you start a lesson. These are special read only copies of the sequence that are used for running the lesson.

If you create a design XYZ and save it in your own folder, and then start a lesson with XYZ, then a copy of XYZ in placed in the Lesson Sequence Folder. You can go back into authoring and change the original XYZ sequence in your folder, but you can't change the copy in the lesson sequence folder. The reason why we show the sequences in the lesson sequence folder is that you might change the original sequence, then decide you want to go back to it as it was when you ran the lesson. You can open up the one in the lsson sequence folder but it will be read only, so you will then have to save it to another folder or as another name.

Secondly about the error. That error is coming out of Moodle but I'm don't know where the actual error is. Have you checked your apache log to see if there is anything there that tells us more about the error.

If there isn't anything obvious in the apache log, then please reproduce the problem (ie get the error again) and post a copy of the apache log and the LAMS logs. See http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lamsdocs/Creating+DEBUG+Logs for how to create a debug log and which log files you need to include.

Regards,

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff

By: Anders Berggren

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Hi,
I have tried to follow up on your instructions.

1. I created a sequence and then tried to run it
   and start the lesson a number of times with the
   same result.
2. I have also performed all the steps you suggested
   about not being able to add a new instance of lamstwo

I have attached a .zip with all required files.

Cheers, Anders

Posted by Anders Berggren

By: Fiona Malikoff

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Anders,

If you have created one sequence and started a lesson multiple times, I'm not sure why you have ended up with so many copies in your own folder. I'll have to think about that one.

Thanks for the zip. I've read through the error report document and I'll try to address each issue separately.

The easiest is the problem you found with the LAMS/Moodle Demo website, and the error message you got when you selected the "I want a red one!" resource on the "Choose a mobile phone" lesson.

The error was:

javax.servlet.ServletException: UUID value is missing. Expected format /download?uuid&version=preferDownload= (version number optional) or /download/


This is actually a problem with the old LAMS 1.0.2 importer.

This sequence/design was imported from the old version of LAMS (LAMS 1.0.2) and the old export is unable to export any files attached to a resource. When the design was imported into LAMS 2.0, the importer should have gone through the design and removed the problematic entries as suggested by the warning given by the import program. But I suspect someone was in a hurry and forgot to check for problems.

The LAMS 2.0 export does attach the files so this wouldn't be a problem if the original design had been created in LAMS 2.0.

So for now, you can ignore this error. I've put up a note on  this lesson on the demo site so that other people don't get caught by the same problem.

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff

By: Fiona Malikoff

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Anders,

You also commented on "the concepts
of sequences (which in my ears refer more to computer science than pedagogy), designs, lessons and groups and how they are related to each other".

I agree that sequences does have pretty computer science feel to it, which is probably why all the stuff you see on the wiki tends to refer to sequences - the wiki was written by computer science / engineering people.

I've just gone back an updated the descriptions of some of the terms on:
http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/Overview
http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/Glossary+of+Terms

We changed the meaning of the word "Group" part way through the LAMS 2.0 development and I hadn't updated the wiki. Hopefully the explanations are now a bit better.

There is also a teacher's guide.

But in short for the purposes of LAMS:

Learning Design = Design = Learning Sequence = Sequence
A learning design is a sequence of activities.

Probably not entirely correct pedagogically but I use the terms interchangeably.

Users in LAMS are assigned to permanent Groups. Groups can have sub-groups. These groups related to "real world" groupings such as a course, tutorial class, etc. In the past we referred to these groups as Organisations.

A lesson is a learning design / sequence that run with a class.

When you are running within just LAMS, the teacher selects a learning design/sequence then selects users from a Group. The selected users form a new lesson class.

When you are running with Moodle, you create a Moodle LAMS activity by selecting the learning design and doing start (or scheduling it to start later) and the lesson class is created automatically.

While the lesson is running, there can also be temporary groups created that apply only within the lesson. These break the lesson class into smaller groups as directed by grouping activities within the learning design.

Does this help?

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff

By: Anders Berggren

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Hi Fiona!
Thanks for taking time to provide
a fast and thorough answer. And it
helps, absolutely.

As for the terminology I see the logic
and I understand your answer. And, I don't
have any other good solutions ... I was just
thinking aloud about this in terms of usability
and aspects of user-friendliness. I suspect that
most of the LAMS end-user are not too familiar
with computer science and many of them won't want
to learn much about it either. So they are likely to
be confused and start discussing the use of language
something that you might want to avoid if promoting
the system trying to obtain teacher adoption.
This is not a pure teacher's world however. Teachers
are going to have share this world with ICT-specialists
and both have to broaden their ways of communicating
if you don't mind my saying so.

In order to understand LAMS more fully you need to
be familiar with things like computer science, online
development of Open Source projects and IMS Learning
Design. You also need to know what questions to ask
and where to look for answers. LAMS information is spread
in many places by now. These are general problems and
I don't have any good quick solutions to this either.
I think this may be a pedagogical issue of promoting
Information Literacy. Anyway it is not all that easy to
keep up with things, at least not to me. I'm just thinking
about how to spread the knowledge and get people
interested.

Thanks for clarifying things to me and poitning me in the
right directions. I will read, amongst other things,
the teacher manual.

Cheers, Anders

Posted by Anders Berggren

By: Fiona Malikoff

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Anders,

Last posting for today.

You mentioned that you tried to rename your learning design and that failed. I can't find an error in the log for this so I don't know what happened and I don't really have any way of tracking down what the problem was - the Flash dump file doesn't tell me enough.

But there was an error in the log from renaming a folder, and I can see how that error would have happened. Did you try renaming your own folder? If so, then that would have caused an error, but there is a bug in reporting back the error to the user so you might have got an error saying it was a null pointer exception or you might not have got an error at all. (I've raised this as a bug report so it should get fixed in the next version of LAMS.)

You can't change the name of your own folder - its done that way to make it easier for sysadmin's to be able to find someone's folder. You can create a subfolder and rename the subfolder, but not your own folder.

Now, I haven't given you an answer on the real problem - creating a new lesson. We are still working on that problem.

Regards,

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff

By: Anders Berggren

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Hi,
I think I tried to change the
name of a subfolder.

I'm a bit confused with difference
between LAMS v2 in itself and the
LAMS/Moodle integration. LAMS starts
if you want add a LAMS v2 from within
Moodle, right? And if you run LAMS
only then you won't see any tracks of
what you have done with it in Moodle, or?

Cheers, Anders

Posted by Anders Berggren

By: Fiona Malikoff

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Anders,

On the difference between LAMS v2 itself and the integration.

There are three way you go into LAMS from the integration.
* When you add a LAMS v2 and you click on the "Create Sequence" button, you are taken into the LAMS authoring module.
* When you select an existing LAMS v2 resource and click the "Open LAMS Monitor" link, you are taken into the LAMS learner module.
* When you select an existing LAMS v2 resource and click the "Open LAMS Learner" link, you are taken into the LAMS learner module.

So If you run LAMS directly and log into LAMS, then you generally won't see the tracks of what you do in Moodle, but under some circumstances you may see your tracks. In fact, I regularly do have a look at my tracks, so that I can debug problems!

I'll try to explain.

When you are using LAMS via Moodle, your username is actually a combination of a prefix and your moodle username. On the Moodle demo site, my Moodle username is fmalikoff and my LAMS username is lamsv2_fmalikoff and lamsv2_fmalikoff is in a group of users called "lamsv2_2".

Now, the server running LAMS for the demo moodle integration is actually http://demo.lamscommunity.org/lams/. I could also log in to http://demo.lamscommunity.org/lams/ directly using a different username and user group e.g. fmalikoff in group "Playpen". If I logged in as fmalikoff I wouldn't see any of my Moodle based stuff as lamsv2_fmalikoff and fmalikoff are two completely different users, in different groups.

So in that case, I wouldn't see my Moodle tracks.

But, if I go into http://demo.lamscommunity.org/lams/ as lamsv2_fmalikoff (and I don't just log in as lamsv2_fmalikoff - there is a little trick to doing it), then I will see my Moodle tracks. LAMS will think it is me coming in from Moodle and hence show all the Moodle stuff.

If you really want to know the trick I'll tell you, but you probably don't so I won't confuse you further.

So in general, in the normal usage of LAMS you won't see your Moodle tracks within LAMS. But if you use the special trick to "fool" LAMS, then you can see you tracks.

Clear as mud?

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff

By: Anders Berggren

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Clear as mud diluted with clean water.

I guess everything is collected in the
LAMS database and consequently it can
be retrieved from there, one way or the
other. It makes sense to have different
interfaces, one in LAMS itself and another
in the LAMS/Moodle integration of course.

I would also expect that you can start LAMS
from within Moodle separately, automatically?
Anyway you can obviously also run LAMS only
at the same time using the same instance of
LAMS. LAMS v2 will however not start from
within Moodle, not in my system anyway. Normally
it takes a minute to start LAMS so maybe I
should wait. On the other hand there is no
indication of a start-up-process being initiated
from within Moodle so I am a bit confused, again.

Still can not create any LAMS v2 activities
in Moodle either.

"Could not add a new instance of lamstwo"

But you already knew that.

Anders

Posted by Anders Berggren

By: Fiona Malikoff

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We've finally sorted out Anders' problem with starting lessons. Turns out the LAMS table (mdl_lamstwo) was missing from the database.

Don't know how it has happened as something must have gone wrong with the module installation, but if anyone else finds that they can create sequences but can't start lessons, then check for a table called mdl_lamstwo in your Moodle database.

If you don't have it, then try uninstalling and then reinstalling the LAMS 2.0 module, and if that doesn't work you may have to run the SQL in the mysql.sql file manually (ie the mysql.sql file in the lamstwo/db directory).

Fiona

Posted by Fiona Malikoff